Louisiana Voice

If you think Louisiana politics is rife with corruption, try combining ours with the politics in neighboring Texas for a truly potent blend of underhanded dealings.

And when it involves Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton teaming up with a Louisiana district attorney to take down an opponent of the district attorney, it can lead to only one obvious outcome: an application for funding from Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund settlement of his lawsuit against the IRS.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story actually begins long ago and far away—eleven years ago in Austin, Texas—when on April 20, 2015, Paxton issued a press release announcing the filing of a lawsuit against a Houston-based learning center that the Texas AG said was selling fraudulent high school diplomas and transcripts.

Named as co-defendants along with Parkview Home School in Houston were Christian Chesson of Lake Charles, Lilton Chesson Jr. of Houston Tara Rose Castellanos, Mindy Kay Ring, Legal Properties, LLC of Lake Charles and the Chesson Family Partnership of Lafayette. More on some of the defendants later. Castellanos and Ring both are sisters of Christian Chesson and both worked for Parkview Home School.

In his press release, Paxton said since 1994, Parkview Home School “has provided fake high school diplomas and transcripts to Texas consumers for a fee and employs no teachers, requiring little or no coursework or educational requirements on their students. Defendants claim to have provided services to 42,000 “students” and has obtained approximately $1.4 million from Texas consumers” by charging customers fees between $200 and $300 for bogus diplomas and transcripts that were “not accepted by community colleges, four-year universities, trade schools, the military, law enforcement academies or employers.”.

So, how did a Lake Charles resident become embroiled in alleged fraudulent operations of a Houston home school?

In a word, politics. Whether it was Louisiana-flavored or Texas-style politics remains something of a mystery but there seems to be no question there was collusion against Christian Chesson who was opposing the reelection of Calcasieu District Attorney John DeRosier.

Less than a month after Paxton’s announcement of the lawsuit that included Christian Chesson as a defendant, the attempted smackdown of Chesson began with a May 15, 2015, formal complaint against him with the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board’s Office of the Disciplinary Council.

That letter was written by none other than DeRosier who wrote while Chesson’s campaign reported no contributions to his campaign, “Parkview Baptist School issued Mr. Chesson a $25,000 check on August 22, 2914, right before the date of qualifying for this election, and issued him a $20,000 check on December 15, 2014. Parkview Baptist School also issued Mr. Chesson a $9,000 check on October 31, 2014. Page 15 of Mr. Chesson’s 21-page March 1, 2015, report shows that he loaned his campaign $9,000 that same day.”

His complaint asserted that the checks constituted campaign contributions that far exceeded the $2500 limit set by state law.

Derosier noted that Chesson had claimed his campaign was “totally funded” by his personal loans to his campaign and that he further publicly denied any affiliation with the school. His complaint listed Chesson’s address as 4151 S.W. Freeway, Ste. 340, in Houston but Chesson’s attorney, John Green Jr., responded in an Aug. 21 letter that his client had been in LSU Law School during the time in question and was subsequently employed as a law clerk in Lake Charles until 1996 and was not residing in Houston.

Green went to explain in his letter that Chesson did indeed receive each of the payments claimed by DeRosier and used portions of the payments to loan money to his campaign. But the payments from Parkview, he said were for reimbursement of money that Chesson had spent on mortgage notes for his home in which his father, Lilton, was residing and for improvements to the Lilton Home where Christian Chesson was residing in Lake Charles.

A reconciliation of amounts spent by both parties conducted by a CPA revealed that Lilton Chesson still owed Christian Chesson $117,473.60.

“In short,” Green wrote, “the checks were made payable to Mr. Chesson, not his campaign, and were for personal loans unrelated to Parkview.

In the end, both the complaint to the Attorney Disciplinary Board and a complaint filed with the Louisiana Board of Ethics were dismissed along with Paxton’s filing of a “nonsuit with prejudice,” dismissing Chesson as a defendant—but only after Chesson had already incurred nearly $60,000 in legal fees.

Chesson called the entire affair “a quid pro quo between Paxton and his friend John DeRosier. What DeRosier gets in return from Paxton holds not just ethical concerns but also criminal charges,” he said in his own ethics complaint filed on Sept. 15, 2016. He said in his complaint that Paxton, during a trip to Lake Charles, “dined with his friend…John DeRosier. At that dinner, according to someone in attendance, Paxton and DeRosier planned ways to cause problems for me and my family after I had the ‘audacity,’ as DeRosier told the Louisiana Bar, to run against him.

“Part of that conspiracy launched by DeRosier against me was to target my family, friends and clients,” he said.

DeRosier died last October.

Chesson pointed out correctly that both DeRosier and Paxton had their own ETHICS PROBLEMS in the past.

But Chesson may yet have the last laugh.

When Donald Trump settled his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for the establishment of a $1.8 billion slush fund to award those whom had been “persecuted” and otherwise “improperly prosecuted” by the government, it may have opened an unanticipated Pandora’s Box for Republicans.

On Saturday, May 23, Chesson drafted an application for formal submission under the “Weaponization of Federal and Interstate Governmental Process for Political Retaliation Program” established under the fund.

The “Interstate Governmental Process for Political Retaliation” is the key clause here for his being named as a defendant in Paxton’s lawsuit certainly qualified as “interstate.” He likely will not receive anything with his application but it should be sufficient to cause at least some discomfort among the Trumpians.

Perhaps another of his attorneys, Gwen Richard, said it best when she messaged Chesson to say, “Hey Chris, this is a very clever use of the Republican B.S. fund. Someone obviously wasn’t thinking ahead to the fact that it could be used against them. I don’t know anybody with the [James]Talarico campaign, but I will check around with some of my political friends and see if they can recommend a connection. As for me, I’m getting the hell out of this country.”

Talarico is the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Texas. He will face the winner to today’s Republican Primary between Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.

Ah, Louisiana. The political fights are never dull.